Is Medicaid Worthless? Views Differ

Above: person whose worst ailment is false consciousness

Wingnut welfare recipient Bret Stephens:

Barack Obama inherited a broken health care model and made it worse, unless you count shunting millions of people into Medicaid as a triumph. For all the liberal angst about the Republican House and Senate bills, they are only tinkering with the same unfixable formula.

Well, these smarmy bare assertions are certainly CHALLENGING MY ASSUMPTIONS! But perhaps we should turn to the part of the paper that is actually trying to provide information to its readers:

Frances Isbell has spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disorder that has left her unable to walk or even roll over in bed. But Ms. Isbell has a personal care assistant through Medicaid, and the help allowed her to go to law school at the University of Alabama here. She will graduate next month.

She hopes to become a disability rights lawyer — “I’d love to see her on the Supreme Court someday,” her aide, Christy Robertson, said, tearing up with emotion as Ms. Isbell prepared to study for the bar exam in her apartment last week — but staying independent will be crucial to her professional future.
“The point of these programs is to give people options and freedom,” said Ms. Isbell, 24, whose family lives a few hours away in Gadsden.

The care she gets is an optional benefit under federal Medicaid law, which means each state can decide whether to offer it and how much to spend. Optional services that she and millions of other Medicaid beneficiaries receive would be particularly at risk under Republican proposals to scale back Medicaid as part of legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

If only Isbell would realize that being “shunted” to Medicaid was no victory, and instead she should medical savings accounts to magically make her treatments affordable!

My modest proposal is that James Bennet offer Stephens a new compensation package with a 35% pay cut and no health insurance. I’m sure Stephens would accept this as mere tinkering with the status quo, and indeed would greet Bennet as his liberator for permitting him to engage in glorious bargain-hunting for medical treatment.